The U.S. response to the pandemic has already spawned a range of speedily published books. A few notable examples have come from masters of journalistic narrative, including Michael Lewis and Lawrence Wright; former officials, such as Scott Gottlieb and Andy Slavitt; and newspaper reporters, especially Yasmeen Abutaleb and Damian Paletta. But the most significant entry so far, the book that should be an indispensable resource for future historians, is Silent Invasion by Deborah Birx, the coordinator of the White House Coronavirus Task Force under President Donald Trump.

Birx’s book has received relatively little attention in the two weeks since it was published—it still has not been reviewed by The Washington Post or the Los Angeles Times, for instance, or sparked nearly as much chatter as Mark Esper’s less consequential memoir that was also just released. Much of the attention that has been paid to Birx has focused not on the contents of the book, but on Birx herself, who witnessed and failed to stem fatal mistakes and poor decision making (with the notable exception of vaccine development) during her almost-one-year tenure on the task force. That’s a shame, because the book is the best account we have so far of how Trump’s team botched the pandemic response so badly.

Birx does a very good job of distilling what went wrong. She repeatedly emphasizes what she identifies as the principal fault in the Trump administration’s pandemic response: a failure to recognize the importance of asymptomatic transmission (thus the book’s title). She laments testing problems, including initial refusals to enlist the private sector, mistakes at the CDC, and later failures to ramp up diagnostics. Birx also cites the CDC’s consistent failure to develop good data about the pandemic, and places this at the center of reforms she proposes toward the book’s end.

But what sets Silent Invasion apart is how Birx, with the writing assistance of Gary Brozek, unhesitatingly names names (and dates and places). She does so with much more detail and nuance than we’ve had from anyone else. Birx paints a portrait of an administration in full, made up of people with a mix of talents and motivations. Where other chroniclers describe the White House as if it had just one occupant, Birx gives us the full cast. The book’s first 150 pages, on the period from January through March 2020, are especially riveting. In the early crucial weeks of the crisis, she writes, “some roaming the halls of the West Wing believed that the less we did, the less we would be held accountable for whatever was about to happen.”

Birx has her own list of bad guys. The worst is Scott Atlas, the radiologist whose epidemiology advice Trump came to take. Atlas, she writes, repeatedly responded to group emails from her by hitting “Reply All” and then removing her from the list before sending. Other lead villains include presidential Chief of Staff Mark Meadows (who seems to care only about politics) and vice-presidential Chief of Staff Marc Short (who seems to care only about protecting his boss from his boss). Also: Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, the entrenched and inflexible staff of the CDC, the out-of-its-depth staff of the Council of Economic Advisers, the politically wobbly World Health Organization, Governor Kristi Noem of South Dakota, and Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida, who, Birx indicates, knew better but caved to political pressure. Birx is forthright in calling out numerous examples of her sexist treatment by other White House staffers, especially Meadows and Short.

The forces for good, in her view, include some surprises. She portrays Vice President Mike Pence and presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner as often aiding work that Trump loudly derided. Pence never seemed publicly at variance with Trump, and Kushner has been widely criticized for inept logistical efforts, but Birx offers a few convincing examples of moments when they worked to quietly facilitate some positive actions. Birx also praises her friend Matt Pottinger, who served as a deputy national security adviser, along with governors including Doug Burgum of North Dakota and Doug Ducey of Arizona. In between, alternately bolstering and disappointing her, are her longtime colleagues Anthony Fauci and CDC Director Robert Redfield.

Other pandemic-book writers have been forced to speculate about what happened outside of Trump’s immediate environment. More than a year has passed since the former administration left office, but the inner workings of its response to the pandemic have still remained out of view. Perhaps that’s why so much coverage focused single-mindedly on Trump, the loudest and most shocking voice, while largely neglecting the rest of the team. But Birx was in the building, watching everything unfold, and she can and does shine light on details that others can’t. She later drove around the country and talked with governors and other local leaders, and has a real basis for comparing their performance.

She does not, however, neglect the central character in Washington. A career public-health worker and career Army officer (on active duty from 1980 until 2008), Birx refuses to sum up her views of Trump personally, but she offers more than enough detail for readers, including historians, to reach their own conclusions. She describes her first meeting with Trump, on March 2, 2020, when she tried to explain to him that the virus “is not the flu.” Trump listened for a minute, briefly challenged her, then literally changed the channel on one of the TV screens he had simultaneously been watching.

Birx didn’t stand up to Trump in public while she worked for him. In the book, she laments her most public lapse: When Trump seemed to advocate consuming disinfectant in a live televised briefing, and she feebly and quietly uttered, “Not as a treatment.” She should have been more forceful, she writes, “should have ignored my deeply ingrained, military-honed instinct not to publicly correct a superior.”

Birx’s refusal to publicly oppose Trump during her time in the White House continues to haunt her reputation. Her subsequent interviews—like her book—have been revealing, but they’ve also often been criticized as too little, too late. This criticism has some merit. Some cynics may believe that she has written her book to obscure the record. I’m more inclined to believe that she continues to be motivated by her own sense of duty, and wants the rest of us to see what she saw.

The book makes a compelling case that much of the blame laid at Birx’s door for Trump-era pandemic shortcomings is an oversimplification, or worse. Birx details how, in private, she and other officials sought to counter Trump’s resistance to fighting the pandemic. In August 2020, Birx writes, Trump hung up on her when she refused to back down after he insisted that “the virus is under control.” She is remarkably candid about how she and her colleagues manipulated Trump into the initial 15-day shutdown in March, and then its 30-day extension, which he almost immediately regretted. (Neither Trump nor anyone in his camp seems to have responded to Birx’s book publicly.)

Birx portrays herself as an experienced bureaucratic infighter. For example, when Pence’s chief of staff told her that the stark language in bullet points at the top of a daily report was too politically explosive, she simply inserted almost identical language farther down in the document, where the busy politicos trying to stifle her would fail to see it. She’s the sort of person who still counts it as a win when her initiatives are refuted publicly but actually remain unchanged.

But Birx seems to have been in over her head in the toxic office politics of the Trump White House. For instance, she speculates at length in the book about which of her rivals was trying to undermine her by releasing a memo she wrote warning of the late-2020 surge on the eve of the presidential election. In this instance, it seems likely that Mark Meadows was right: As Birx writes in the book, he told her that the leak was intended to affect the election, not her career.

Birx had been much more comfortable working for President George W. Bush, who, she writes, “created a space where people could succeed, supported us to make the impossible possible. Trump’s White House was the opposite in many ways.” When Birx was feeling particularly exasperated by Trump, Bush convinced her not to resign.

Deborah Birx could not bring order to the chaos of the Trump White House, or reason or compassion to its management of the pandemic. The resulting losses were huge.

But none of that takes away from what Silent Invasion has to offer. Birx has given us an important record of how and why all those losses were suffered. With COVID cases once again on the rise, her reflections can be put to important use, both as yesterday’s history is written and as today’s unfolds.

The relationship between public opinion and the codification of rights is not linear. Public opinion lagged decades behind the courts on the question of interracial marriage, but led the way on same-sex marriage. In theory, rights supersede public opinion—you should have the right to free speech even if what you’re saying is very unpopular. In practice, rights are safer when they are popular.

Now that the Supreme Court seems poised to reverse itself on Roe v. Wade, abortion-rights advocates and anti-abortion advocates are both claiming the mantle of popularity. Who’s right? I dug into the numbers, and found that views were more straightforward than I’d thought—and the exercise was more disquieting than I’d anticipated.

Most people want abortion to be legal, and they want restrictions on its availability. Beyond that basic position, however, voters’ views can appear contradictory. That’s in part because, although Americans tell pollsters that the details of an abortion policy are important in determining whether or not they will support it, survey respondents display very little knowledge of the relevant details.

[Kimberly Wehle: What we keep getting wrong about abortion]

One study indicates that myths about abortion are pervasive enough to skew voters’ understanding of the issue. Women correctly answered 18 percent of questions about abortion regulations in their state, and correctly identified only 23 percent of true statements about abortion. For instance, many incorrectly believe that “childbirth is safer than abortion” and that “abortion causes depression and anxiety.”

Similarly, in 2016 poll by Vox and Perry/Undem of 1,060 registered voters, only 19 percent of respondents correctly answered that giving birth was less safe than having an abortion; 31 percent of respondents said they weren’t sure whether doctors who provide abortions are “licensed medical professionals like other doctors.” (The answer is yes, they are).

Americans may not have a firm grasp of the details. But pollsters have still been able to learn a few clear lessons about attitudes on abortion policy.

Views about abortion are unusually stable

In 1958, when Gallup first asked Americans whether they approved of marriage between Black and white people, only 4 percent said yes. That number rose steadily over the next 50 years: In 1967, when the Supreme Court ruled in Loving v. Virginia that bans on interracial marriage were unconstitutional, approval stood at a little less than 20 percent; in 1997, 64 percent; and in 2021, 94 percent.

In 1937, when Gallup polled Americans about whether they were willing to vote for a woman presidential candidate, 33 percent said yes; in 1959, 57 percent said yes; and at the end of the century, 92 percent answered affirmatively.

In 1996, just 27 percent of Americans told Gallup that they believed same-sex marriages should be recognized as equal to “traditional marriages.” By 2015, when the Supreme Court ruled in Obergefell v. Hodges that states had to recognize same-sex marriage, that number had shot up to 60 percent.  

Abortion is different. In the 1970s, a large majority of Americans wanted abortion to be legal in at least certain circumstances. That remains true today.

[From the May 2022 issue: The future of abortion in a post-Roe America]

“You look at anything like support for interracial marriage or voting for a woman for president or gay marriage or legalizing marijuana … all of the cultural shifts that have happened since the dawn of polling, and this is the thing that hasn’t shifted. Abortion is a real exception in the cultural landscape,” Lydia Saad, Gallup’s director of U.S. social research, told me.

In a comprehensive review of abortion polling, the American Enterprise Institute’s Karlyn Bowman found that—across decades, pollsters, and different types of questions—attitudes have remained stable since the 1970s. For example, a 1990 NBC/Wall Street Journal poll found that 57 percent of Americans believed “the choice [to have an abortion] should be left up to the woman and her doctor.” In October 2009, this number was 51 percent. A Yankelovich/Time/CNN poll from August 1987 found that 34 percent of Americans believed abortion was the “woman’s decision no matter what the reason”; 39 percent said the same in January 2003. In August 1997, 40 percent of people identified themselves as pro-life to a Fox News pollster; in June 2019, that number was 45 percent.

Saad told me that opinions about abortion have also remained stable within generational cohorts across time. Women ages 18 to 29 in 1975 had roughly the same views as women ages 63 to 75 today: “The same age group will flash forward 50 years, and the balance of views hasn’t changed on the legality question. So these are hardwired,” she explained.

People want abortion to be legal, but favor a variety of restrictions

Gallup has found that the number of people favoring legal abortion under any circumstance has consistently outstripped the number of those wanting it to be illegal under any circumstance since 1975. But the broad center of public opinion says that abortion should be legal only “under certain circumstances.” This number has bounced from 54 percent in 1975 to a high of 61 percent in 1997 to 48 percent in 2021.

What are those circumstances? Americans are sympathetic to women seeking abortions if they are victims of rape or incest, if they have a serious health concern, or if the baby will be born with a disability. They are significantly less willing to approve of abortion in cases of economic hardship or personal preference.

To put some numbers on it: In 1972, 83 percent of Americans agreed that abortions should be allowed when “a woman’s health [is] seriously endangered by the pregnancy” and 72 percent said the same when the pregnancy is the product of rape. In 2021, those numbers were 87 percent and 84 percent, respectively.

At least 70 percent of Americans since 1972 have also favored legal abortion if “there is a strong chance of a serious defect in [the] baby.”

A poll conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago semiregularly from 1972 to 2018 found that Americans are evenly split on the acceptability of abortion if the “family has [a] very low income and cannot afford any more children” or if a woman is married and doesn’t want any more children. (The precise figures in 2018 were 47 percent and 49 percent in support, respectively.)

On the question of timing, polls by Gallup/CNN/USA Today and Associated Press/NORC from 1996 to 2021 reveal that more than 60 percent of Americans say abortion “should be generally legal” in the first three months of a pregnancy. That number drops precipitously, to the low 30s, when Americans are asked about the second trimester, and to below 20 percent when they’re asked about the third.

Various restrictions have broad support as well. In 2011, 69 percent of respondents told Gallup that they support a law forcing women seeking abortions to wait 24 hours before having one. In that same year, 71 percent said minors should have to get parental consent for an abortion. And in 2005, a Gallup/CNN/USA Today poll found 64 percent support for requiring that the “husband of a married woman be notified if she decides to have an abortion.”

Respondents may not understand how cumbersome these requirements are. “Most voters are trying to express really vague concepts through these incredibly specific questions that we ask them,” Charlotte Swasey, a Democratic strategist and pollster, told me.

Relatedly, laws that ban abortions in the second trimester don’t represent a middle-ground consensus position, because states that pass them also tend to put up barriers to getting abortions early on.

[Helen Lewis: How to win the abortion argument]

One 2006 study indicated that 91 percent of women who had an abortion in the second trimester would have preferred to terminate their pregnancy earlier. Some 67 percent of second-trimester patients, for instance, said they’d had to delay having their abortion because it took them so long to make arrangements; 36 percent said “it took some time before I knew I was pregnant or how far along I was.”

The political salience of abortion

On the national level, voters have generally trusted Democrats over Republicans on abortion policy. In 2012, when the Pew Research Center asked voters whether President Barack Obama or his rival in the election, Mitt Romney, was better suited to handle abortion policy, Obama edged out Romney 55 percent to 36 percent. (The same poll showed that 54 percent of voters believed correctly that Romney was pro-life, whereas 21 percent believed that incorrectly of Obama.)

Perhaps surprisingly, given how contentious abortion is in the national conversation, voters tend not to rank it as high as other issues. In an October 2021 YouGov/Economist poll, 44 percent of respondents said that abortion was “very important” to them but only 4 percent named it as a “top issue.”

But of the people who do rank abortion highly, anti-abortion advocates are more likely to subject their candidates to litmus tests on the issue. In a 2015 Gallup poll, 23 percent of those opposed to abortion and 19 percent of abortion-rights supporters said they would vote only for candidates who shared their views on the issue.

This dynamic could be shifting. As FiveThirtyEight reported, “After the Supreme Court allowed a highly restrictive abortion law to go into effect in Texas last fall, the share of Biden voters who said abortion is a ‘very important’ issue for them jumped, while the share of Trump voters who said the same thing fell.”

All of the aforementioned polling has been conducted nationally, but with the imminent demise of Roe likely, the politics of abortion will happen at the state level, where public opinion varies significantly and where Republican legislatures are ready to severely restrict or eliminate abortion rights.

I found writing this essay difficult. While scrolling through poll after poll, I resented that I had to care about public opinion on something as private as a medical decision. The doctor’s office is crowded enough without inviting in the opinions of 300 million Americans. I can’t imagine weighing in on someone’s decision to donate an organ, or to stop treatment for a difficult disease. My irritation only compounded as the survey data revealed a public that feels a sense of ownership over my choices. I imagine the median voter staring disapprovingly at me with a clipboard, trying to determine if I deserve full decision-making authority over my body. Nobody should get to volunteer my body, my time, and my life to the state, no matter how unpopular my choices.

For now, few believe that they should have the ability to impose their opinions about abortion via state violence. Pew has found that 47 percent of American adults say women should face penalties for getting an abortion “in a situation where it is illegal.” When pressed, however, only 14 percent of respondents think that jail time is an appropriate punishment, another 16 percent support community service, and 17 percent remain unsure.

But we can expect the disconnect to grow between what Americans want and what they get. Republicans in states across the country have passed or are pondering legislation well outside the mainstream of public opinion. So-called heartbeat bills, which have been proposed in several states, would limit abortion to the first six weeks, before many women even know they are pregnant. In Louisiana, Republicans are considering a bill that would treat abortion as murder, meaning patients could be charged as criminals. In Oklahoma, the second Roe falls, abortion will be banned, with no exception for rape or incest. To put a fine point on it, these are extremely radical policies, intended to almost entirely eradicate abortions.

The effect will be significant. One study that looked at 1,178 counties in 18 states from 2000 to 2014 found that “highly restrictive” abortion policies led to a 17 percent decrease from the median abortion rate. Another study estimated that total abortion bans would lead to a 21 percent increase in deaths due to pregnancy-related mortality. This is the new reality, one that has not felt possible while most women of childbearing age have been alive.

Americans’ views have remained stable under a relatively stable legal framework. But when stories of women seeking unsafe and illegal abortions hit the front pages, when victims of rape or incest find themselves forced to bear children, when underfunded social services struggle to provide adequate care for newly born but uncared-for infants, all of that could change.

The relationship between public opinion and the codification of rights is not linear. Public opinion lagged decades behind the courts on the question of interracial marriage, but led the way on same-sex marriage. In theory, rights supersede public opinion—you should have the right to free speech even if what you’re saying is very unpopular. In practice, rights are safer when they are popular.

Now that the Supreme Court seems poised to reverse itself on Roe v. Wade, abortion-rights advocates and anti-abortion advocates are both claiming the mantle of popularity. Who’s right? I dug into the numbers, and found that views were more straightforward than I’d thought—and the exercise was more disquieting than I’d anticipated.

Most people want abortion to be legal, and they want restrictions on its availability. Beyond that basic position, however, voters’ views can appear contradictory. That’s in part because, although Americans tell pollsters that the details of an abortion policy are important in determining whether or not they will support it, survey respondents display very little knowledge of the relevant details.

[Kimberly Wehle: What we keep getting wrong about abortion]

One study indicates that myths about abortion are pervasive enough to skew voters’ understanding of the issue. Women correctly answered 18 percent of questions about abortion regulations in their state, and correctly identified only 23 percent of true statements about abortion. For instance, many incorrectly believe that “childbirth is safer than abortion” and that “abortion causes depression and anxiety.”

Similarly, in 2016 poll by Vox and Perry/Undem of 1,060 registered voters, only 19 percent of respondents correctly answered that giving birth was less safe than having an abortion; 31 percent of respondents said they weren’t sure whether doctors who provide abortions are “licensed medical professionals like other doctors.” (The answer is yes, they are).

Americans may not have a firm grasp of the details. But pollsters have still been able to learn a few clear lessons about attitudes on abortion policy.

Views about abortion are unusually stable

In 1958, when Gallup first asked Americans whether they approved of marriage between Black and white people, only 4 percent said yes. That number rose steadily over the next 50 years: In 1967, when the Supreme Court ruled in Loving v. Virginia that bans on interracial marriage were unconstitutional, approval stood at a little less than 20 percent; in 1997, 64 percent; and in 2021, 94 percent.

In 1937, when Gallup polled Americans about whether they were willing to vote for a woman presidential candidate, 33 percent said yes; in 1959, 57 percent said yes; and at the end of the century, 92 percent answered affirmatively.

In 1996, just 27 percent of Americans told Gallup that they believed same-sex marriages should be recognized as equal to “traditional marriages.” By 2015, when the Supreme Court ruled in Obergefell v. Hodges that states had to recognize same-sex marriage, that number had shot up to 60 percent.  

Abortion is different. In the 1970s, a large majority of Americans wanted abortion to be legal in at least certain circumstances. That remains true today.

[From the May 2022 issue: The future of abortion in a post-Roe America]

“You look at anything like support for interracial marriage or voting for a woman for president or gay marriage or legalizing marijuana … all of the cultural shifts that have happened since the dawn of polling, and this is the thing that hasn’t shifted. Abortion is a real exception in the cultural landscape,” Lydia Saad, Gallup’s director of U.S. social research, told me.

In a comprehensive review of abortion polling, the American Enterprise Institute’s Karlyn Bowman found that—across decades, pollsters, and different types of questions—attitudes have remained stable since the 1970s. For example, a 1990 NBC/Wall Street Journal poll found that 57 percent of Americans believed “the choice [to have an abortion] should be left up to the woman and her doctor.” In October 2009, this number was 51 percent. A Yankelovich/Time/CNN poll from August 1987 found that 34 percent of Americans believed abortion was the “woman’s decision no matter what the reason”; 39 percent said the same in January 2003. In August 1997, 40 percent of people identified themselves as pro-life to a Fox News pollster; in June 2019, that number was 45 percent.

Saad told me that opinions about abortion have also remained stable within generational cohorts across time. Women ages 18 to 29 in 1975 had roughly the same views as women ages 63 to 75 today: “The same age group will flash forward 50 years, and the balance of views hasn’t changed on the legality question. So these are hardwired,” she explained.

People want abortion to be legal, but favor a variety of restrictions

Gallup has found that the number of people favoring legal abortion under any circumstance has consistently outstripped the number of those wanting it to be illegal under any circumstance since 1975. But the broad center of public opinion says that abortion should be legal only “under certain circumstances.” This number has bounced from 54 percent in 1975 to a high of 61 percent in 1997 to 48 percent in 2021.

What are those circumstances? Americans are sympathetic to women seeking abortions if they are victims of rape or incest, if they have a serious health concern, or if the baby will be born with a disability. They are significantly less willing to approve of abortion in cases of economic hardship or personal preference.

To put some numbers on it: In 1972, 83 percent of Americans agreed that abortions should be allowed when “a woman’s health [is] seriously endangered by the pregnancy” and 72 percent said the same when the pregnancy is the product of rape. In 2021, those numbers were 87 percent and 84 percent, respectively.

At least 70 percent of Americans since 1972 have also favored legal abortion if “there is a strong chance of a serious defect in [the] baby.”

A poll conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago semiregularly from 1972 to 2018 found that Americans are evenly split on the acceptability of abortion if the “family has [a] very low income and cannot afford any more children” or if a woman is married and doesn’t want any more children. (The precise figures in 2018 were 47 percent and 49 percent in support, respectively.)

On the question of timing, polls by Gallup/CNN/USA Today and Associated Press/NORC from 1996 to 2021 reveal that more than 60 percent of Americans say abortion “should be generally legal” in the first three months of a pregnancy. That number drops precipitously, to the low 30s, when Americans are asked about the second trimester, and to below 20 percent when they’re asked about the third.

Various restrictions have broad support as well. In 2011, 69 percent of respondents told Gallup that they support a law forcing women seeking abortions to wait 24 hours before having one. In that same year, 71 percent said minors should have to get parental consent for an abortion. And in 2005, a Gallup/CNN/USA Today poll found 64 percent support for requiring that the “husband of a married woman be notified if she decides to have an abortion.”

Respondents may not understand how cumbersome these requirements are. “Most voters are trying to express really vague concepts through these incredibly specific questions that we ask them,” Charlotte Swasey, a Democratic strategist and pollster, told me.

Relatedly, laws that ban abortions in the second trimester don’t represent a middle-ground consensus position, because states that pass them also tend to put up barriers to getting abortions early on.

[Helen Lewis: How to win the abortion argument]

One 2006 study indicated that 91 percent of women who had an abortion in the second trimester would have preferred to terminate their pregnancy earlier. Some 67 percent of second-trimester patients, for instance, said they’d had to delay having their abortion because it took them so long to make arrangements; 36 percent said “it took some time before I knew I was pregnant or how far along I was.”

The political salience of abortion

On the national level, voters have generally trusted Democrats over Republicans on abortion policy. In 2012, when the Pew Research Center asked voters whether President Barack Obama or his rival in the election, Mitt Romney, was better suited to handle abortion policy, Obama edged out Romney 55 percent to 36 percent. (The same poll showed that 54 percent of voters believed correctly that Romney was pro-life, whereas 21 percent believed that incorrectly of Obama.)

Perhaps surprisingly, given how contentious abortion is in the national conversation, voters tend not to rank it as high as other issues. In an October 2021 YouGov/Economist poll, 44 percent of respondents said that abortion was “very important” to them but only 4 percent named it as a “top issue.”

But of the people who do rank abortion highly, anti-abortion advocates are more likely to subject their candidates to litmus tests on the issue. In a 2015 Gallup poll, 23 percent of those opposed to abortion and 19 percent of abortion-rights supporters said they would vote only for candidates who shared their views on the issue.

This dynamic could be shifting. As FiveThirtyEight reported, “After the Supreme Court allowed a highly restrictive abortion law to go into effect in Texas last fall, the share of Biden voters who said abortion is a ‘very important’ issue for them jumped, while the share of Trump voters who said the same thing fell.”

All of the aforementioned polling has been conducted nationally, but with the imminent demise of Roe likely, the politics of abortion will happen at the state level, where public opinion varies significantly and where Republican legislatures are ready to severely restrict or eliminate abortion rights.

I found writing this essay difficult. While scrolling through poll after poll, I resented that I had to care about public opinion on something as private as a medical decision. The doctor’s office is crowded enough without inviting in the opinions of 300 million Americans. I can’t imagine weighing in on someone’s decision to donate an organ, or to stop treatment for a difficult disease. My irritation only compounded as the survey data revealed a public that feels a sense of ownership over my choices. I imagine the median voter staring disapprovingly at me with a clipboard, trying to determine if I deserve full decision-making authority over my body. Nobody should get to volunteer my body, my time, and my life to the state, no matter how unpopular my choices.

For now, few believe that they should have the ability to impose their opinions about abortion via state violence. Pew has found that 47 percent of American adults say women should face penalties for getting an abortion “in a situation where it is illegal.” When pressed, however, only 14 percent of respondents think that jail time is an appropriate punishment, another 16 percent support community service, and 17 percent remain unsure.

But we can expect the disconnect to grow between what Americans want and what they get. Republicans in states across the country have passed or are pondering legislation well outside the mainstream of public opinion. So-called heartbeat bills, which have been proposed in several states, would limit abortion to the first six weeks, before many women even know they are pregnant. In Louisiana, Republicans are considering a bill that would treat abortion as murder, meaning patients could be charged as criminals. In Oklahoma, the second Roe falls, abortion will be banned, with no exception for rape or incest. To put a fine point on it, these are extremely radical policies, intended to almost entirely eradicate abortions.

The effect will be significant. One study that looked at 1,178 counties in 18 states from 2000 to 2014 found that “highly restrictive” abortion policies led to a 17 percent decrease from the median abortion rate. Another study estimated that total abortion bans would lead to a 21 percent increase in deaths due to pregnancy-related mortality. This is the new reality, one that has not felt possible while most women of childbearing age have been alive.

Americans’ views have remained stable under a relatively stable legal framework. But when stories of women seeking unsafe and illegal abortions hit the front pages, when victims of rape or incest find themselves forced to bear children, when underfunded social services struggle to provide adequate care for newly born but uncared-for infants, all of that could change.

To avoid drawing unwanted attention, Tommy and the four others dressed as if they were heading out for a leisurely day. It was July 2020, and the weather was perfect for some time on the water. The young men acted as though they knew one another well, and were excited to reconnect. But inside, Tommy felt panicked and desperate. He was about to attempt an escape from Hong Kong, where he faced a near-certain jail sentence for his role in the prodemocracy protests there. He feared that he, or one of these strangers, might have been tailed by police to the docks.

In the scenario that kept replaying in his head, officers closed in on the men as they stood next to their boat, a roughly 20-foot rigid speedboat laden with jugs of extra fuel and fishing equipment. Tommy—who asked to be identified by a nickname—didn’t allow himself to relax until the boat sped away from land, the coastline shrinking behind them and the blue sky stretching out in front.

As the boat’s hull slapped against the rolling swells, the life vests the men carried flew overboard, but they didn’t bother to turn back. One leaned over the edge and peeled identifying numbers off the boat’s bow, hoping for an extra layer of anonymity. They took turns driving—the young men had learned their elementary boating skills from watching videos on YouTube and had practiced a handful of times. No matter who was behind the wheel, they kept the engine throttle wide open and scanned the horizon for trouble. The whipping wind and the din of the motors made communication nearly impossible. The sun set. The lights of fishing boats and enormous shipping vessels bobbed up and down.

Tommy lost track of how long they’d been driving the boat—at least 10 hours. When the GPS unit showed the vessel leaving Hong Kong waters, they finally eased off on the throttle. “We knew we were safe,” Tommy later told me. They passed around snacks and water, then introduced themselves to one another, sharing their real names for the first time and explaining their reasons for undertaking such a perilous journey: All were prodemocracy activists looking for safety on the island of Taiwan. Their bid for freedom, however, would soon draw in the United States.

Hours earlier, one of Tommy’s green Vans sneakers had sailed over the side of the boat and into the water. No one had considered stopping to retrieve it. Now, in spontaneous, rowdy celebration of their nearly completed escape, the group peed on the remaining shoe, then kicked it overboard—a memory that Tommy would laugh about later.

Their plan had been fairly simple: If they made it this far, they would turn off their engines, and call a contact in Taiwan who would alert the coast guard to their presence. When the authorities arrived, they would claim they had run out of fuel on a fishing trip and needed to be towed to shore. Only once on land would they divulge their true stories. Tommy gazed upward as they waited for the coast guard to arrive. The light pollution radiating from Hong Kong normally obscured his view of the stars. But here, in the open water, he could see the whole sky.

When the Taiwanese coast guard appeared, the five men waved flashlights to attract attention. Their plan fell apart almost as soon as the authorities reached their boat. The coast guard had extra fuel on hand, and initially offered to simply transfer it over, then send the wayward boat on its way. As the coast guard crew spoke to the young men, however, they grew suspicious. What were the five doing in the area? Why were they carrying so few supplies and traveling in an unmarked boat? “They knew that we weren’t just out fishing,” Tommy told me.

The young men fessed up, telling the sailors their real intentions. They had been among huge crowds of people who since the spring of 2019 had taken to the streets to call for democracy in Hong Kong. Now they feared for their safety as Beijing not only stamped out the protests, but moved to decimate all dissent in the city. The Taiwanese coast guard brought the group ashore where they were questioned by military officials. The next day, they were moved again by ship. Tommy slept on and off. He wasn’t sure where they were heading.

Eventually, he and the others were deposited in rooms that reminded him of the dorms at his university back in Hong Kong. They had no computers and no internet access. Government officials—Tommy isn’t sure who they were—came and went, asking more questions. Eventually, the five men were allowed to watch TV and read articles from Apple Daily, the now-defunct prodemocracy newspaper. As their confinement stretched into months, Tommy, who had been an arts student before he abandoned his studies, sketched to pass the time.

Some of the young men wanted to stay in Taiwan, but others hoped to resettle elsewhere. They were given English lessons by a tutor. The materials, for reasons none of them understood, covered the history and geography of Boston, and how to navigate the city on public transportation. To mark New Year’s Eve, Tommy shaved off his long hair. He wanted a symbolic new start. Two weeks later—about six months after he’d fled Hong Kong—the journey to freedom that started on a small boat would end on a commercial flight that touched down in the United States.

Hong Kong was long a magnet for people seeking opportunity and running from persecution. Residents of mainland China fleeing the violence and political purges of the Cultural Revolution swam toward the city’s lights—Tommy’s grandmother among them. In the late 1970s, thousands packed into ships, many of which were cramped wooden fishing boats, to escape to Hong Kong from Vietnam as that country’s war ended. After the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, student activists from China snuck into Hong Kong.

Now the fleeing has reversed, as Beijing’s crusade to strip Hong Kong of its defining freedoms has created a wave of exiles. “It is still beautiful,” Kwok Ka-ki, a former prodemocracy lawmaker, told me of the city, “but underneath, everything has changed.” Soon after we spoke, he was arrested, and now faces charges under a draconian national-security law imposed in 2020, an effort to extinguish any form of political opposition wholesale.

At Hong Kong’s airport—even as it is crippled by stringent COVID regulations—crowds gather nightly to board flights abroad, aiming to join the tens of thousands who have already left. Among them are parents worried about the city’s more nationalistic curriculum, activists escaping the ever-shrinking space for dissent, and former prodemocracy legislators who have seen their colleagues locked up.

Over the course of several years living in and covering Hong Kong, I have met countless such exiles. Some want nothing more than anonymity in their new countries, hoping to put the movement behind them. Others remain deeply involved in activism from abroad, setting up organizations and creating online initiatives. They share an acute feeling of isolation and sadness, unmoored from a place they once believed they could help save.

Three in particular are fleeing almost certain jail time after joining in prodemocracy demonstrations and agitation, their stories highlighting the gulf between Hong Kong’s promise and its reality today. They either escaped aboard a tiny boat, ultimately crossing a vast distance, or tested U.S. border policy by illegally slipping into America on land. One later spent months walking from New York to Florida on foot to raise awareness of Hong Kong’s plight. “You think this is crazy?” Tommy said to me when I marveled at the riskiness of his trip. “Imagine how I feel.”

The exiles—all of whom, like Tommy, asked to be identified by nicknames to avoid retribution from Beijing and pro-China groups—are each grappling with their newfound freedom in different ways, at times clashing with other members of the Hong Kong diaspora over how best to help their home city, and wrestling with guilt for those left behind. They have put their fate in the hands of the U.S., a country they still see as a beacon in their fight against China.

Almost as soon as Tommy and his fellow travelers were escorted ashore in Taiwan, officials there began working to resolve the geopolitical dilemma the group had inadvertently set off. Beijing had baselessly accused the U.S. and Taiwan of fomenting the Hong Kong protests, so a public announcement about the five could further inflame tensions. Taiwan—which lives under Beijing’s constant threat of forceful reunification with mainland China—sought American help. The State Department worked with a Hong Kong lobbyist in Washington, D.C., to begin planning the group’s transfer to U.S. soil.

In January 2021, the men boarded a flight from Taipei to New York City. Through all those months in limbo in Taiwan, Tommy had been unable to directly contact his family. He had rehearsed cracking a joke to tell them he was fine, but when he landed in the U.S. and finally spoke to them on the phone, he broke down crying.

Adams Carvalho

On the surface, Tommy and Ray have a lot in common. Both have family members who fled mainland China for the relative safety of Hong Kong (albeit decades apart), and both grew up on tales of Chinese Communist Party abuse. And though the men’s paths did not cross in Hong Kong, they were both active participants in the city’s protest movement. Tommy had been among those who broke into the Legislative Council building; Ray was one of the students who occupied a university campus in a days-long siege.

But the two are also very different. Tommy is a wiry, bespectacled 24-year-old, whereas Ray, 20, is stocky and gregarious, a bit of a smartass. Tommy was riven with fear and uncertainty during the months it took him to plan his escape from Hong Kong; Ray seemed to me to be totally unbothered by the risks he had taken.

Ray fled Hong Kong aboard a plane bound for London in August 2020. After arriving and looking up Britain’s asylum-acceptance rates, he turned his sights to the United States. But the Trump administration had banned flights from Europe as part of efforts to curtail the coronavirus pandemic, so after a few months in Britain, and some scheming with an eccentric Chinese activist and immigration lawyer he connected with on Twitter, he boarded another flight, this one bound for Mexico. He would cross into the U.S. on foot.

Ray first attempted the crossing soon after arriving, in January 2021. He walked for hours after being dropped near a crossing point by a smuggler. It was frigid and windy. To avoid detection, he trekked in complete darkness. But no one stopped him, and eventually he arrived at a gas station in Southern California, where a contact met him. He fell asleep during the car ride north and awoke only when the driver announced, “Welcome to L.A.”

From there, he initiated an asylum claim, which likely would have inched through the bureaucracy were it not for Ray’s own impatience. Holed up in an Airbnb east of Los Angeles, he killed time watching cable news. He was particularly infatuated with debates over immigration. On one show, liberal-leaning politicians claimed the American system was so dysfunctional that migrants detained after attempting to enter the U.S. would likely be granted asylum faster than those who arrived without incident. Hearing this, Ray devised a new plan.

In early February, he headed back to the border, walked into Mexico, and then, after a few days, tried crossing into the U.S. again. This time, he hiked across a stretch of hills outside Mexicali and used a flashlight to catch the attention of a group of border guards. When they got ahold of him, he explained his situation in English, hoping to find a compassionate audience. Instead, the oldest-looking of the three turned him around, menacingly warned him not to try crossing again, and watched as Ray trudged into Mexico. Again.

Undeterred, Ray waited a few days and revised his tactics. He took a new route and this time, after flagging down some border guards, pretended not to understand English, speaking to them in Cantonese, the dominant language of Hong Kong. Carrying only his mobile phone and a few other possessions, he feigned ignorance—and had to stifle a laugh—when one of the agents said, “I caught a ninja!” The border guards finally resorted to using a translation app to pepper him with questions.

Authorities took him to a detention center where he was held for eight days with about 20 other men. The Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in San Diego where he was soon transferred was far better. After interviews with U.S. officials, he walked out of Otay Mesa Detention Center in mid-April 2021. The asylum process typically takes from six months up to several years, according to the National Immigration Forum, an advocacy group. It took Ray just 63 days.

Since the start of the 2019 protests, the U.S. has consistently called for China to preserve Hong Kong’s independent press, judiciary, and rule of law. Time and again, American officials and politicians have criticized Beijing for its crackdown. Congress passed the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act in 2019, which put the city’s special trading privileges with the U.S. under greater scrutiny, and compelled the U.S. to level sanctions against Hong Kong officials responsible for human-rights abuses. If these measures were designed to curtail China’s actions, however, they failed. Beijing has brushed them off as little more than a nuisance.

Stories such as Tommy’s and Ray’s suggest the U.S. is fulfilling its obligation to Hong Kong’s prodemocracy movement. The means they took to get to the U.S., though, were drastic and almost impossible to replicate. A truer test of American mettle is the countless others like them who remain in limbo, victims of a broken and deeply politicized American immigration system. These people stood up to Beijing’s authoritarian might and, knowing they would likely lose, fought for their freedoms anyway. Yet U.S. lawmakers from both parties who once cheered them seem to have largely moved on.

The Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act passed the House of Representatives by a 417–1 vote in November 2019, but the bipartisanship was fleeting. At the time, few were more eager to bash China than Senator Ted Cruz, who flew to Hong Kong at the height of the protests and dressed in all black out of “solidarity” with the demonstrators. The marches were “inspiring,” Cruz said then. About a year after he proclaimed Hong Kong to be the “new Berlin,” however, he showed the limits of his support. In December 2020, he killed a bill that included provisions for temporary protected status for Hong Kongers and expedited certain refugee and asylum applications. It had previously passed in the House.

A few months before Cruz shot down the bill, saying it was a ploy by Democrats who support “open borders” to make “all immigration legal,” a group of Hong Kongers, among them an American citizen, sought protection in the city’s U.S. Consulate but were turned away. One was arrested by the Hong Kong authorities and sentenced to three years and seven months in jail.

Last August, the Biden administration made a small concession, blocking the enforced removal of many Hong Kong residents from the U.S. for a period of 18 months. The White House said in a memo that “offering safe haven for Hong Kong residents who have been deprived of their guaranteed freedoms in Hong Kong furthers United States interests in the region.” Getting in, however, remains a challenge.

Adams Carvalho

Kenny, a 27-year-old former civil engineer, took the same route as Tommy to flee Hong Kong; he was on the same boat. But while Tommy soon decided that he liked New York, Kenny felt restless.

Kenny had stayed fervently involved in the Hong Kong prodemocracy movement when he was resettled, initially in Arlington, Virginia. He joined protests and tried to spread his message on social media. But he wanted to do more, and staying planted in Arlington while trying to sound the alarm seemed ineffective. So he settled on the most American of pastimes, a road trip—but without that most American of possessions, a car. His first walk was a 10-day trek from the White House to New York City. He hoped that by speaking to ordinary Americans, he could raise awareness of the crackdown under way in his home city. A few months later, Kenny set off on an even more ambitious route, from the Pentagon all the way to Miami. In all, he estimated, he would walk more than 1,000 miles.

Kenny documented his movements on Instagram, posting videos and photos of the people he encountered and the places he passed through. He snapped pictures fit for a tourism ad for rural America: rolling cornfields, Amish families standing near their horse-drawn buggies, red-painted barns. He embarked on his walk with his face completely covered by a reflective sunglass shield that looked like it was borrowed from the prop closet on a cyberpunk film set, and a thin flag pole jutting from his backpack adorned with two black banners that read Liberate Hong Kong, Revolution of Our Times, one in Chinese and another in English.

His unusual appearance attracted attention, not all of it welcoming. In Maryland, someone called the police on him as he knocked on doors looking for bandages. On the eighth day of his walk to Miami, a stranger pulled a gun on him as he tried to hide near the man’s garage during a rainstorm.

As he moved farther south, Kenny found people to be more accommodating, which he’d expected, and more informed about the prodemocracy movement, which he hadn’t. Often, though, he was downbeat, discovering that many Americans had the luxury of not knowing or caring what was happening on the other side of the world.

He felt more optimistic when a worker at a sports bar in Moncure, North Carolina, told him he had followed the news about Hong Kong, and gave Kenny slices of pizza and an orange soda. In Glynn County, in southeastern Georgia, Kenny spent the night with firefighters who let him sleep in the firehouse. In Florida in mid-October, a woman invited him to sleep at her house. He stayed for three days, met her family, and joined them on a trip to a park where he spotted a manatee in the water. He documented the sighting with an Instagram post punctuated by a string of exclamation points. In all, the walk lasted 66 days.

As he navigated America’s roadways, a court case about him in Hong Kong carried on. Kenny had been among a group of demonstrators who, rallying against a government decision to ban face masks at marches, had assaulted a police officer after the officer grabbed a protester. Video of the skirmish, filmed by a passenger on a nearby bus, was picked up by international news outlets. Kenny was arrested but released on bail, which is when he began trying to escape Hong Kong by boat, eventually succeeding on his fifth or sixth try. (Earlier failed efforts cost him a small fortune.)

Days after his outing to the park in Florida, sentences were handed down against two of Kenny’s co-defendants. One was given seven years in jail, the other sent to a rehabilitation center. Kenny told me he had no regrets about fleeing, that he wanted to look forward. “This is why I decided to walk—because I don’t want to think back or live in a constant state of regret,” he said. He later admitted that he did at times feel guilt about leaving, but he tried to bury it, preferring to focus on forward action. “I’m thinking: What can I do on their behalf?” he said. “This is my purpose.”

In some—extremely limited—respects, he has succeeded, telling individual Americans about a fight for freedom half a world away that many of them are unaware of. I spoke with one of the people who met Kenny on his walking tour, Nicholas Kiernan, who said he had initially driven past Kenny in Northern Virginia in late August while on his way to work. Kenny’s peculiar appearance caught Kiernan’s attention. He resembled “a Google mapping device,” Kiernan told me. “He looked wild.” About a half hour later, Kiernan, a land surveyor, was still thinking about the odd character from his morning commute when Kenny stumbled onto Kiernan’s worksite. Intrigued, Kiernan hopped out of his truck to ask Kenny what he was up to.

Kenny showed him photos of the Hong Kong protests, explaining to Kiernan, who knew nothing about what was happening there, about how police had cracked down on demonstrators. “It was thought-provoking stuff,” Kiernan recounted. But perhaps more than anything, Kiernan said he was impressed by Kenny’s courage—sleeping in a tent and carrying a heavy backpack for miles at a time, speaking to total strangers in a foreign language in a new country. “It takes heart to be able to do something like that.”

Additional reporting by Karina Tsui.